Orissa: A Gujarat in the Making

by
Angana Chatterji

Dissident
Voice
November 1, 2003

In Gujarat,
Hindu extremists killed 2,000 people in February-March of 2002. Muslims live in
fear there, victims of pathological violence.

Raped,
lynched, torched, ghettoized. A year and half later, Muslims in Gujarat are
afraid to return to their villages, many still flee from town to town. Ghosts
haunted by history. Country, community, police, courts — institutions of
betrayal that broker their destitution. This is India today.

The
National Human Rights Commission recognized the impossibility of achieving
justice in Gujarat. The Best Bakery murder trial flaunted dangerous liaisons
between government, judiciary and law enforcement. Those who speak out are
vulnerable. Outcry against the consolidation of Hindu rightwing forces in India
is subdued. In a world intent on placing Islam and Muslims at the centre of
‘evil’, Hindu nationalism escapes the global imagination.

Orissa is
Hindutva’s next laboratory. This July, in a small room on Janpath in
Bhubaneswar, workers diligently fashioned saffron armbands. Subash Chouhan,
state convenor for the Bajrang Dal, the paramilitary wing of Hindutva, spoke
with zeal of current hopes for ‘turning’ Orissa. Christian missionaries and
‘Islam fanatics’ are vigorously converting Adivasis (tribals) to Christianity
and Dalits (erstwhile ‘untouchable’ castes) to Islam, Chouhan emphasized. He
stressed the imperative to consolidate ‘Hindutva shakti’ to educate,
purify and strengthen the state.

Western
Orissa, dominated by upper caste landholders and traders, is a hotbed for the
promulgation of Hindu militancy, while Adivasi areas are besieged with
aggressive Hinduization through conversion. Praveen Togadia, international
general secretary of the VHP, visited Orissa in January and August 2003 to
rally Hindu extremists. He advocated that Orissa join Hindutva in its movement
for a Hindu state in India. ‘Ram Rajya’, he promised, would come.

In Orissa,
the sanghparivar is targeting Christians, Adivasis, Muslims,
Dalits and other marginalized peoples. The network divides its energies between
charitable, political and recruitment work. It aims at men, women and youth
through religious and popular institutions. The sangh has set up various
trusts in Orissa to enable fund raising, such as the Friends of Tribal Society,
Samarpan Charitable Trust, Yasodha Sadan, and Odisha International Centre.

There are
around 30 dominant sangh organizations in Orissa. This formidable mobilization
is the largest base of organized volunteers in the state. The RSS, responsible
for Gandhi’s death, was founded in 1925 as the cultural umbrella. It operates
2,500 shakhas in Orissa with a 1,00,000 strong cadre. The VHP, created
in 1964, has a membership of 60,000 in the state. Born in 1984, at the onset of
the Ramjamanbhoomi movement, banned and reinstated since the demolition of the
Babri Masjid in 1992, the Bajrang Dal has 20,000 members working in 200 akharas
in the state.

Membership
of the BJP stands at 4,50,000. The Bharatiya Mazdoor sangh manages 171
trade unions with a cadre of 1,82,000. The 30,000 strong Bharatiya Kisan sangh
functions in 100 blocks. The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, an RSS
inspired student body, functions in 299 colleges with 20,000 members. The
Rashtriya Sevika Samiti, the RSS women’s wing, has 80 centers. The Durga
Vahini, with centers for women’s training and empowerment, has 7,000 outfits in
117 sites in Orissa.

Intent on
constructing the ‘ideal’ woman who decries the ‘loose morals’ of feminism, the sangh
seeks to train Hindu women to confront the ‘undesirable’ sexual behavior "endemic"
to Muslims and Christians. Such training endorses ‘masculanization’ of the
Hindu male looking to protect the fictively threatened Hindu woman.

In October
2002, a Shiv Sena unit in Balasore district in Orissa declared that it had
formed the first Hindu ‘suicide squad’. Responding to Bal Thackeray’s
call, over 100 young men and women signed up to fight ‘Islamic terrorism’. The
Shiv Sena appealed to every Hindu family in the state to contribute to its
cadre. Squad members, it is speculated, will receive training at Shiv Sena
nerve centers in Mumbai and elsewhere.

Why
Orissa? The state is in disarray, the leadership labors to sustain a coalition
government headed by the Biju Janata Dal and the BJP. The government is
shrouded in saffron. As the sangh infiltrates into civic and political
institutions seeking to ‘repeat’ Gujarat not many are paying attention. For the
36.7 million who reside in Orissa, Hindutva’s predatory advance aggravates and capitalizes
on social panic in a land haunted by inequity.

Orissa
houses 5,77,775 Muslims and 6,20,000 Christians, 5.1 million Dalits from 93
caste groups, and over 7 million Adivasis from 62 tribes. Around 87 percent of Orison’s
population live in villages. Nearly half the population (47.15 percent) lives
in poverty, with a very large mass of rural poor. Almost a quarter of the
state’s population (24 percent) is Adivasi, of which 68.9 percent is
impoverished, 66 percent illiterate and only 2 percent have completed a college
education. 54.9 percent of the Dalits live in poverty. Concentrated in Cuttack,
Jagasinhapur and Puri districts, 70 percent of the Muslims are poor. In March
2002, Orison’s debt amounted to 24,000 crore rupees, more than 61 percent of
the gross domestic product of the state.

In
2001-2002, the government of Orissa signed a memorandum of understanding with
New Delhi to secure a structural adjustment loan of Rs. 3,000 crore from the
World Bank and an aid package of Rs. 200 crore from the department for
international development, the overseas development branch of the government of
the United Kingdom. This is conditional assistance, laden with extensive and
hazardous consequences. People’s movements protested this agreement for tied
aid that supports irresponsible corporatization and works against the
self-determination of the poor.

Consecutive
governments, including the present coalition, have failed to address entrenched
gender and class oppressions as exploitative relations endure between the
poverty-stricken and a coterie of moneylenders, government officials, police
and politicians in Orissa, perpetuating displacement, land alienation, and
untouchability. Floods have affected three million in 2003. Agricultural laborers
are faced with serious food shortages with no alternative means for income
generation. Scarcity has led to starvation deaths and people have committed
suicide. Infant mortality, 236 in 1000, is the highest in the Union.

In the
recent past, Rayagada district has witnessed despairing efforts to survive —
the sale of children by families. In Jajpur district, a mother, a daily wage
earner in a stone quarry, sold her 45-day-old child for Rs. 60 this July. These
measures have not evoked reflection and commitment on the part of the State.
Rather, unconscionable attempts have been made to show that such action is
emblematic of Adivasi and Dalit cultures.

Systematic
disregard for the human rights of ‘lower’ caste, Adivasi and Dalit peoples is a
social and structural predicament. In December 2000, Rayagada witnessed state
repression of Adivasi communities protesting bauxite mining by a consortium of
industries in Kashipur that is detrimental to their livelihood. The industries
were in breach of constitutional provisions barring the sale or lease of tribal
lands without Adivasi consent. In response, state police fired on non-violent
dissent, killing Abhilas Jhodia, Raghu Jhodia and Damodar Jhodia.

The
absence of adequate social reform, the disasters of dominant development,
economic liberalization and corporate globalization further antagonize already
overburdened minority and disenfranchised groups, pitting them against each
other. Hindutva targets the religion and culture of the disempowered as globalization
abuses their labor and livelihood resources. Such conditions produce the
contexts in which marginalized peoples embrace identity-based oppositional
movements.

The sangh
exploits the fabric of inequity and poverty deviously to weave solidarity built
on tales of a mythic Hindu past. Hindutva defames history, speaking of Muslims
as the ‘fallen traitors’ among Hindus who converted to Islam. This revisionist
history obfuscates the severity of inequity within Hindu society that led to
conversions historically. Alternatively, Hindutva misrepresents Muslims as
‘terrorists’ and ‘foreigners’, Christians as ‘polluted’. Adivasis are falsely
presented as Hindus who must be ‘reconnected’ to Hinduism through Hindutva.
Dalit and lower caste people are raw material for manufacturing foot soldiers
of dissension.

At the
same time, caste oppression prevails in the sanghparivar’s
mistreatment of Dalits in Orissa, who have been assaulted for participating in
Hindu religious ceremonies. In April 2001, a Dalit community member was fined
Rs. 4,000 and beaten for entering a Hindu temple in Bargarh.

Poor
Muslim communities are often socially ostracized in Orissa. Cultural and
religious differences are diagnosed as abnormal. A Muslim community member from
Dhenkanal said, "When Hindus celebrate a puja we are expected to pay our
respects and even offer contributions. For them this is an example of goodwill,
of how we are accepted into their society, indeed we are no different as long
as we do not act differently."

A Muslim
woman added, "Women face double discrimination, from men of our own
community as well as from the outside". Women fear the sangh will
perpetrate violence on their bodies to attack the social group to which they
belong.

In witch
hunting for the ‘enemy within’ to blame for India’s befallen present, the sangh
demands absolute loyalty to its tyranny, requiring an unequivocal display of
obedience. The sangh dictates the rightful gods to worship, prayers to
recite, legacies to remember. Hindutva imagines its actions above the law. It
makes the unification of Hindus central to its mission. To do so, it organizes
Hindus to fulfill their ‘manifest destiny’, fabricating Hinduism as monolithic
across the immense diversity of India.

Grassroots
movements in resistance to the debacle of nation making are combating the sangh.
Where Dalits, Adivasis and others are allied in subaltern struggles for land
rights and sustenance, Hindutva intervenes, seeking to divide them. Grassroots
democracy threatens upper-caste Hindu dominance and contradicts elite
aspirations. To domesticate dissent, the sangh invigorates militant
nationalism. In village Orissa, emulating Gujarat, the sangh works to
create enmity between Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims and Christians. Progressive
citizen’s groups have initiated opposition, including the ‘Campaign Against
Communalism’ in Bhubaneswar. Their capacity to contest despotic religiosity is
linked to redressing political oppression, redistributing economic resources
and overcoming injustice.

Fear of
the sanghparivar runs deep in Orissa, producing acquiescence.
The sangh’s methods are sadistic, contributing to violations of life and
livelihood. In January 1999, as the vehicle with Australian missionary Graham
Staines and his two sons, Philip and Timothy, was torched in Keonjhar district,
the mob’s homage to ‘Jai Bajrang Bali!’ pierced the state. Then followed
the murder of Catholic priest Arul Das and the destruction of churches in
Phulbani district. After much delay, last month, the Orissa district and
sessions court delivered a verdict on the Staines’ murder case, sentencing Dara
Singh, the primary accused, to death, and 12 others to life imprisonment.

The
Bajrang Dal continues its virulent onslaught in Orissa. In June 2003, the Dal
announced that it would organize ‘trishul diksha’ (trident
distribution), despite chief minister Naveen Patnaik’s ban. Praveen Togadia
planned on launching the trishul distribution campaign in Banamalipur in
Korda district to provoke an area with a significant Muslim population. The
Bajrang Dal plans to present trishuls to 5,000 as part of the
Janasampark Abhiyan (mass contact program) that anticipates reaching 100
million people in 2,00,000 villages throughout India.

The
objective? To spread aggression. Between July and September 2003, the Bajrang
Dal organized intensive programs in Bhubaneswar, Sundergarh and Jajpur. Aimed
at securing a 1,50,000 membership in Orissa, this is part of a larger campaign
that targets Gajapati, Phulbani, Keonjhar, Mayurbhanj, Koraput, and Nabarangpur
districts.

In Orissa
today, the sangh mobilizes for a Ram temple among people for whom
Ayodhya is a tale from afar. By 2006, the birth centenary of RSS architect
Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, sangh organizations promise that Orissa will
be a poster state for Hindutva. The sangh’s considerable advance in
rural and urban Orissa has helped the BJP consolidate its position in the
state, reflected in its gains in the state Assembly from one seat in 1985 to 41
presently. In return for its support, the sangh expects the government
to tolerate its excesses. In March 2002, a few hundred VHP and Bajrang Dal
activists burst into the Orissa Assembly and ransacked the complex, objecting
to alleged remarks made against the two organizations by house members.

Development
and education are key vehicles through which conscription into Hindu extremism
is taking place. After the cyclone of 1999, relief work undertaken in a
sectarian manner by RSS organizations granted the sangh a foothold
through which to strengthen enrolment. Today, the Utkal Bipannya Sahayata
Samiti works on disaster mitigation with facilities in 32 villages. The
Dhayantari Shasthya Pratisthan manages four hospitals and six mobile centers.

In
offering social services and carrying out rural development work, the sangh
makes itself indispensable to its cadre as a pseudo-moral and reformist force.
This continues the sanghparivar’s long history of implementing
sectarian development. Targeting the livelihood of the ‘other’ is a technique
of saffronization. The Bajrang Dal has been strident in stopping cow slaughter
in Orissa, an important source of income for poor Muslims who trade in meat and
leather. Muslims have been beaten and threatened by Hindutva mobs. In India,
amid the staggering poverty in which 350 million live, the participation of
government agencies in debating a ban on cow slaughter is contemptible. This
debate is not about animal rights. It arrogantly contravenes the separation of
religion and state. It is anti-Muslim, anti-Dalit, anti-Christian and
anti-poor.

In Orissa,
egregious infringements of human rights are taking place with the
disintegration of Adivasi and other non-Hindu cultures through their hostile
incorporation into dominant Hinduism. Sectarian education campaigns undertaken
by RSS organizations demonize minorities through the teaching of fundamentalist
curricula. There are 391 Shishu Mandir schools with 111,000 students in the
state, preparing for future leadership. Training camps in Bhadrak and Berhampur
aim at Adivasi youth.

Vanavasi
Kalyan Ashram runs 1,534 projects and schools in 21 Adivasi districts. The sangh
has initiated 730 Ekal Vidyalayas in 10 districts in Orissa, one teacher
schools that target Adivasis. The primary purpose of the schools is to
indoctrinate villages into Hindutva. The teachers are offered Rs. 150-200 per
month as honoraria, no salaries. The schools are free, supported through
donations from organizations like the India Development Relief Fund. For
Adivasi peoples, this facilitates cultural genocide that imperils
self-determination movements struggling against a violent history of
assimilation. The sangh asserts Adivasi political emancipation is a
process of ‘tribalism’ that jeopardizes the nation.

The sangh
drives spiritual centers that use religious scriptures to incite sectarianism
among Hindus. Vivekananda Kendras and Hindu Jagran Manch are active in Orissa
together with Harikatha Yojana centers in 780 villages and 1,940 Satsang
Kendras. There are 1,700 Bhagabat Tungis in Orissa, cultural reform centers run
by the sangh that aim at Hindus and Christians. Another line of attack
is to forcibly convert Christians into Hinduism. Churches and members of the
Christian clergy are apprehensive. In Gajapati and Koraput, Christians have
sought state protection in the past.

In
Gajapati district, RSS and BJP workers torched 150 homes and the village church
in October 1999. A Dalit Christian activist said, "RSS workers tell me
that Christianity brought colonialism to India, and I am responsible for that
legacy. How am I responsible? Feudalism, imperialism, post-colonial betrayal.
That is written across our bodies. How am I responsible?" In June 2002,
the VHP coerced 143 tribal Christians into converting to Hinduism in Sundargarh
district. The Dharma Prasar Bibhag claims to have converted 5,000 people to
Hinduism in 2002.

Orissa
passed a Freedom of Religion Act in 1967 protecting against coercive
conversions. The law, open to problematic interpretations, was overturned in
1973 and returned in 1977. In 1989, the state government activated requirements
for religious conversion. In 1999, Orissa enacted a state order prohibiting
religious conversions without prior permission of local police and district
magistrates. Hindu fundamentalists diligently manipulate these provisions to
intimidate religious minorities. Sangh organizations work with
sympathetic police cadre to ensure that Hindu’s do not convert.

The sangh
purposefully confuses the distinction between the right to proselytize and the
use of religion to cultivate hate. Hindutva propaganda accuses Christian
communities of the former and labels it a crime. The sangh justifies its
use of the latter in the interests of a higher truth, the ‘righteous’ action of
reuniting Hindus. ‘Reconversion’ is working well among the Christian community
in Orissa, Subash Chouhan says, but not with Muslims. "Muslim
reconversions are going slowly because mullahs, maulvis have
created mosques and madrassas in village after village, and guard their
children like chickens. That is the kind of people they are and that it why it
is not so easy to get them back." For Muslims, the Bajrang Dal anticipates
a different approach. Mr. Chouhan said that the Dal would engage in militancy
if needed to "get the job done".

Hindutva
stampedes across Orissa, inciting tyranny to establish itself. As power,
culture and history shape the imagination of a nation, genocide is emerging as
India’s brutal legacy. In denial, in silent and active complicity, we allow
Hindu extremists to march to the guttural call of hate. Hindutva hijacks the
nation’s aspirations. Its doctrine of ‘blood, soil and race’ rewrites the
circumstances and complex histories that produced India. While the separation
of religion and State in India is attempted at the constitutional level, Hindu
militancy derives consent from Hindu cultural dominance.

Hindu
ascendancy is assisted by the degree to which the authority of religion and the
enabling cultural and gender hierarchies are enshrined deep within the popular
psyche of the nation. This dominance assumes that to restrict religion to the
private realm would deny India its historical ‘consciousness’.

India, a
land of 1.2 billion, a profusion of peoples, is bound to the promise of a
different destiny. In the flux between yesterday and tomorrow, dreams and
desires, inequities and intimacies collide to infuse the hybridity that is
India. Her survival is contingent upon the Hindu majority’s commitment to an
inclusive, plural, secular democracy. The idea of a Hindu state in India is
filled with discontent, held together by force. It must never come to pass.

(Note:
Information used in this article is derived from multiple sources, including
interviews with persons affiliated with sangh organizations).